AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
the Ulster Protestants away from your movement by needless tests and you perpetuate the degradation both of yourselves and them. Keep them at a distance from you, make yourselves subservient to the old and wellknown English policy of ruling Ireland always by one party or the other and England will keep her heel upon both your necks for ever."
This was less than two years ago. A small band of men left the aforesaid Hall of Humbug on that day, and ever since its influence declined, its treasury sank, its audiences thinned away. Not all the bluster and blarney and cant and craft of "mighty leaders," and even, I regret to say, of some " revered prelates," were able to save it. Why was this? Because the Irish people despised the hypocrisy and loathed the corruption, but especially because they were heartily sick of the sectarianism that kept you away from our ranks.
If you believe this plain account of the matter, what, then, is your duty? Is it to meet together, as poor Mr. Gregg's Protestant operatives did the other night, and pass resolutions about vital religion and the necessity of revoking the Maynooth grant?
Your friend and fellow-countryman,
(From the "United Irishman" of April 29, 1848).
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